The woman he had called Jakli took one step toward him. "She was my friend, Akzu," she said soberly. "She was my teacher."

The words brought a wince to the man's face. "You owe that woman nothing," he said. "Look at what she did to you."

"I still owe her much, despite things," the woman called Jakli said, with a strange combination of defiance and pain in her voice.

The man called Akzu gazed at her for a long time, then a sad smile grew on his face. "Come here, girl," he said, and opened his arms. "Damn them all for keeping you from us. It's been too long."

As the woman embraced him, Akzu still smiled, but his face clouded, as if her presence reminded him of something he had hoped to forget.

Shan studied their new guides as Akzu began to load their bags onto the young camel. The animal had been a shock to Shan, not because he had never seen one, but because he had not appreciated how far they had traveled. This land was different. The people were different. Neither of the two men had the features of Tibetans. They had gone north, Shan reminded himself, so deep into the Kunlun mountains that they had reached a new people. As if in confirmation, the man at the camel called to the man with the bent nose in a language unintelligible to Shan. It was a dialect of the Turkic tongue spoken by the Muslims of China's far west. They were Uighur, Shan thought, or perhaps Kazakh, like the boys who had died.

The man with the bent nose stepped closer, his hand on the neck of the camel. "You're the one," he said in Mandarin to Jowa. "The one who knows about Public Security?"

Jowa glanced at Shan, discomfort obvious in his eyes.

"They told us-" the man pressed, "they said that you know the secrets of the Public Security Bureau."

Jowa frowned. "The last time I was in prison," he said in a reluctant voice, "my cell mate had worked for Public Security. In Lhasa- part of an experiment in bringing Tibetans into their ranks. The experiment failed, and they had to put him somewhere. He knew it would be years before he was freed, and he decided to share his knowledge so his time as a knob wouldn't be wasted."

The man laughed, as if it was a good joke. "They say you destroyed a convoy of Public Security trucks."

"They happened to be parked in the wrong place. An avalanche started."

"But you did it."

"It was the rocks and snow that did the damage," Jowa said soberly. "Sometimes the mountain spirits get angry." The man laughed again. Jowa cast another awkward glance at Shan. The purbas had painfully learned not to ambush the Chinese overtly or commit obvious sabotage. There was always severe retaliation, and almost always it was against the innocent.

"They say you can beat Public Security checkpoints," the man continued, stepping to Jowa's side, helping to lift his bag onto the camel. "Even electronic checkpoints."

The words seemed to surprise Jowa as much as Shan. The man was traveling in the style of the seventeenth century and speaking of computer software security systems from the twenty-first century.

"Invisible checkpoints are not much different from physical ones," Jowa replied, still with his hesitant tone. "You just need to know how to find them." Shan watched in confusion from the shadow by the truck. Only Jowa and the Tibetan who had driven away were purbas, but the others knew purba secrets.

The camel shook its head, pulling the reins from its neck.

"Good for you," the man said, slapping Jowa on the back. "Good for us."

As the man with the crooked nose bent to retrieve the reins from the ground a paper fell from his pocket. A map.

The wind tossed the map into the air, then dropped it into the circle of sunlight at the center of the clearing a few feet from Shan. He stepped into the light and picked it up.

As he did so a brittle silence descended over the two Muslim men, who seemed to notice his features for the first time. He extended the map to the man with the crooked nose, who merely stared at him with anger in his eyes. Akzu muttered a curse under his breath. Shan stuffed the map under a harness strap on the camel and stepped back toward his bag. He had taken only two steps when the man with the bent nose blocked his path.

"Who's this then?" the man snapped, speaking to Jowa but staring at Shan. He aimed a thick finger at Shan like a gun, then raised it and pushed Shan's hat off his head.

"My name is Shan."

Shan retrieved his hat and placed it back on his head. The man knocked it off again.

"You're Chinese," the man said in an accusing tone.

"In some ways," Shan answered calmly. He picked up his hat again. As soon as he pulled it over his ears the man knocked it off a third time.

"He's the one we're bringing," Jowa said, but he did not move from the side of his horse. "Because of the woman Lau."

"No one said anything about a Chinese coming."

"And I never expected a Uighur," Jowa rejoined. "They said Kazakhs would be here."

The man gestured toward the older man. "The Kazakhs and the Uighurs have many mutual interests. And we both have many mutual interests with the purbas."

Akzu stepped between them, alert, his eyes shifting from Shan to the Uighur. "We have more important work now," the older man said to the Uighur and gestured him away from Shan. Shan stared at the strangers. They wanted Jowa, he realized. Jowa who knew how to beat Public Security patrols.

"We can find our own way," a calm voice said behind him. It was Lokesh. He retrieved Shan's hat from the ground and held it.

"Fine," the Uighur said, and pointed his arm toward the foothills below them. "Northwest. Just keep calling and Lau's ghost will find you."

No one spoke as Shan and Lokesh shouldered their bags and began walking in the direction the man had pointed. Jowa muttered something under his breath and began to follow.

The young woman retrieved her horse's reins and jogged to catch up with Shan. "My name is Jakli," she said, taking Shan's bag. "I will take you to Auntie Lau."

Shan offered a grateful nod. "I need to understand how she died."

Jakli nodded. "She drowned in the river, that's what the prosecutor thinks." She cast an uncertain glance toward the older man. "But it's not true," she said quickly. "Lau was shot in the head like an execution. The prosecutor would just make lies about it if she got the body. So we hid Lau. It would be the place for you to start."

Before Shan could reply, a horse shot past them. The Uighur, now mounted, blocked their path. "You have enough trouble, Jakli," he said to the woman. "You can't share secrets. You don't know this Chinese."

"If the old priests sent this man, then he is the one we need," Jakli said to the rider. The determination in her voice seemed as sharp as a blade.

"Old priests get soft," the man muttered.

Jakli's eyes flared. "After decades in prison for defending their faith they get soft? After watching their gompas leveled to dust they get soft? After their thumbs are cut off to stop them from doing their rosaries they get soft?" She touched Lokesh's arm and looked into his eyes. "Grandfather," she said. "You were a priest."

"For a while," Lokesh said, studying the woman with a toothy grin.

"Tell him. How many years in prison?"

"Thirty," he said, still grinning.